Canada in the twentieth century: continental drift?

The much-hyped new era of globalisation co-exists, paradoxically, with strong regional organisations, most notably the European Union and the North American Free Trade Area. This paper examines the development of Canadian international trade and investment during the past century as affected by the potentially conflicting forces of global economic integration and regionalism. During the first wave of globalisation—the steam driven version of the late nineteenth century—an era characterised by multilateral trading and an open international currency system based around the gold standard, Canada nonetheless came to rely very heavily on the UK as an outlet for its exports and as a source of finance. But even during the first decade of the twentieth century the continental pull was exerting a powerful countervailing force that became even more apparent during the First World War and the 1920s.